Medico /medicastro - considerazioni sulla competenza non solo comunicativa e / o linguistica

The aim of this article is to illustrate the complexities of relations at the level of verbal communication between two separate environments: patients and physicians. Many terms used while addressing physicians are related to and depend on their professional activities. The way of expressing thoughts and the choice of lexical items reflect emotional states and reactions to certain facts and standards of behaviour. We know of many possible linguistic reactions to specific real-life situations and the choice of lexical items depends upon both sociolinguistic factors (level of education of the speaker, place of residence, means of communications) as well as morphological factors (morphological processes) and semantic factors (using metaphoric expressions).